Viv Richards came up to me in 1994 and said: 'You seem to have just about everything, but there's something missing. I feel you don't quite believe you're good enough to play at this level.'

It's too early to predict the future of cricket but it is quite likely that competitive Test cricket will draw an audience comprising both the hoi polloi and purists, writes Ronojoy Sen in the Times of India.

Shah Rukh Khan, India's most successful actor and the owner of the Kolkata franchise, speaks to the Calcutta Telegraph on how he has won the confidence of the side.

The Guardian's Barney Ronay is confused about whether he should join the IPL or not.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I received a call at home from Shahrukh Khan this week. At first I was suspicious. How could I be sure this was indeed Shahrukh Khan, the brightest star in the Bollywood Milky Way and the driving force behind the IPL's blend of excitable showbiz and showbiz excitability.

In the Hindu, Kapil Dev laments the frills associated with the Indian Premier League.

“In times to come you would see teams struggling to survive even 50 overs to save a match because of the mindset of the modern batsmen. I don’t think you will ever get a player like Sunil Gavaskar or Rahul Dravid now."

Herschelle Gibbs speaks to the Cape Times about the standard of the IPL, playing with his new Aussie team-mates and those black boots.

Casson started bowling leggies for a simple reason — Warne — and with three brothers and three sisters was never short of someone to try out his new tricks on. "I tried everything, bowled a few offies, but I just found leg-spin a bit more exciting. We could almost play a Test match out the back of our house. I loved it," he said.

Casson's talent was obvious from the moment he shone for WA in a tour game against England in 2001, and NSW officials wanted him from after he captured the wickets of the Waugh twins and Michael Slater. They later found he had the work ethic to complement his talent and the discipline to manage a congenital heart problem, which he says does not affect his cricket.

Raghuvir Srinivasan, writing in the Hindu's Business Line website, says that the IPL’s financial structuring remains a mystery to the larger public who heard and read about the astronomical sums that a Dhoni or a Symonds was bought for. Srinivasan draws up two simple tables and analyses the way the IPL has been structured, sizing up the main revenue streams for the franchisees - the sale of broadcast rights, sponsorship, gate receipts in matches at their home grounds and team sponsorship - with two big ticket expenses - player costs and the franchise fee payable to IPL - before asking the question: will the franchises break even in the first year itself? Read on to learn more.

The real action will begin from the next edition in 2009. That is when the franchisees will get a grip on the concept and build on the experience of the first year.

Besides, trading of players could start in right earnest, especially if the BCCI decides to remove the cap of $5 million that is now placed on player purchase. The final proof of the success of IPL will come when the franchisees decide to list their teams. This is a live possibility at least by the third year of the IPL, which is 2010, assuming the concept succeeds.

The more successful teams could be prime candidates for listing, especially if player trading takes off aggressively. That is when the franchisees will feel the need for more capital and what better place to raise it than the stock market.

Sharda Ugra, the deputy editor India Today, says the Royal Challengers owner Vijay Mallya has responded to his team's defeats like a disgruntled fan.

Speaking to Kolkata's The Telegraph, the 45-year-old Crowe says that captaincy requires one to articulate thoughts and ideas and handle people well. Interestingly, he also ranks the current Test captains and reveals that he learnt from Ian Chappell and Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy. And that Stephen Fleming was the captain who impressed him most.

The Indian selectors, in particular, have made a smart move by appointing Dhoni as the one-day captain… This will allow him to grow into the full job step by step… Dhoni has charisma and has a manner… He’s learning from the Sachin Tendulkars… New Zealand Cricket should’ve done the same thing as India instead of rushing and giving Vettori everything all too soon. Fleming could’ve been the Test captain for a couple of years more. Definitely one year, if not a couple… England have Paul Collingwood in the ODIs… He’s a fighting cricketer, yes, but is tactically inept… Tactically, I haven’t seen a worse captain but he’ll try and make up for that by fighting performances.

"It's the first time I've used that, it is the best little coaching session you can have," Ponting said. "It's good to have a coach or someone standing by that knows your game. But to have it explained to you is one thing, to see it for yourself and be able to identify yourself what you are doing during a shot is fantastic."

The statistics traditionally used in baseball weren't necessarily much use, and as such they were ripe for re-evaluation. It was [David] Barry who pointed me towards the work of one man who had been recalculating the measures applied to cricket statistics in an effort to find fresh, objective, information on the game, Charles Davis. His book, The Best of the Best, was published in 2000. In it Davis spends a chapter debunking "the myths of cricket".

It is fascinating reading (for a cricket fan). Amongst other things, Davis objectively proves that using a nightwatchman is fundamentally flawed (you can read his analysis here). Ultimately though the book led me to think that there is a third major factor hindering cricket sabermetrics. Cricket is excessively obsessed with its past, and the majority of Davis's book is spent comparing players from different eras and trying to determine who is best. Which is all good fun, but it means that the statistical innovations he makes - such as the calculation of an 'under-pressure average' for batsmen - are squandered on pub-table debate. What Billy Beane did - by contrast - was to take such stats and actually apply them to team training and selection.

And what is the rush? England should beat New Zealand with the most frequently invoked relative in broadcasting - Geoffrey Boycott's mum - at the helm. Why not let Flintoff continue to bowl for Lancashire so he can take time to build confidence in his body and try to find some batting form before the tougher questions that South Africa will ask in the second half of the summer? Flintoff's bowling is rock solid, but his batting is flaky and he needs matches and runs under his belt before he takes Test-match examinations again.

Test matches, in particular, are fine occasions at Lord's, where decorum reigns over the need to dress up as nuns or whatever, there is the buzz of conversation rather than raucous chanting and applause is polite and wholehearted. This, without being po-faced about it, is refreshing at times. But Lord's is also elitist, and hideously expensive. It caters too much for the corporate market and scarcely at all for the casual spectator, restricted as it is by size: it is too small for the demands of international sport. A day out for a family, say four people, will cost around £250 just for tickets, if you can get them, so well ahead do they tend to sell. You cannot blame them for cashing in, but it hardly goes out of its way to being accessible.

The balance between bat and ball is fundamental to the game. Inevitably, there will be times when conditions allow batsmen to have a better time of it than bowlers, and vice versa, but it is not in the interests of the game for one component to dominate the other totally. It is meant to be an even contest. Golf has similar problems, although they do not concern one element suffering a disadvantage. Modern clubs and balls are reducing many of the world's greatest courses to nothing more than a pitch and putt, and in an effort to keep up with technology and preserve relatively high scores the game's administrators are having to amend courses. Holes are being lengthened and the layout changed by placing bunkers and water hazards in unfavourable positions. Cricket does not have such luxuries. Most grounds are arenas and the size of boundaries is limited by the presence of stands.

An editorial in the Guardian also looks at the new bat-handle regulations, and concludes that: “anyone who loves the classic contest of bat and ball will surely applaud.”

Peter Lalor argues in the Australian Ricky Ponting could have made a ton on debut, Australia should have won the 2005 Ashes and India may have won the Sydney Test if the proposed ICC rules on umpire referrals were already in use.

Errors have at times changed the course of a match and a career. Ponting was given out lbw on 96 in his debut Test at Perth against Sri Lanka to a ball clearly going over the stumps.

Andrew Symonds was given not out in Australia's first innings of the Sydney Test against India this summer when he admitted he hit the ball. That and a number of other decisions in the match had many Indians believing they had been robbed. And, of course, England may never have won the 2005 Ashes had the umpire seen that Michael Kasprowicz's hand was not on the bat when the ball hit his glove, with the Australians three runs short of a remarkable victory in the second Test.

In the Age Chloe Saltau looks at the rise of Brad Haddin, the son of a Gundagai publican.

Discipline is undoubtedly the root of his success. You can see it in the way he prepares to bowl, placing his feet meticulously on his bowling mark, planting his fingers carefully on the ball, standing tall and briefly contemplating his delivery before setting off. He idolises Glenn McGrath, and he seems also to have been born with McGrath's other major attribute - desire. There is a bristling, apparently unshakeable determination which has enabled him to leapfrog more experienced practitioners.

The Indian Premier League has been a journey of self-discovery for Matthew Hayden, who's come a long way from the infamous "obnoxious little weed" remark on Harbhajan Singh, part of a confrontational summer against India. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi did for The Beatles, the IPL has done for Hayden, writes Phil Lutton in the Brisbane Times. Read on in stuff.co.nz

"We're quite subtle and we'll give each other a high five and a bit of a hug. Generally speaking, our levels of celebration are quite subdued. From our point of view, we've always looked at the other side and thought 'that's a bit over the top'. But that's the melodramatic nature of their sport - the belief that they have in their culture - and they love success equally as much as Australia."

At the game between the Mumbai Indians and the Deccan Chargers, Ambani was in his box with his wife, Nita, and their three children. The whole family wore blue, the team color. Nita Ambani had slapped a Mumbai Indians sticker on the back of her flowing chiffon salwar kameez. The team logo, she pointed out, was a ball of fire, a divine weapon known as a chakra lifted from Hindu mythology.

No matter. Mumbai was losing badly. The Ambanis’ children looked ashen. “I have to keep reminding myself, it’s only a game,” she said.

The law will state it must feature 90% cane, rubber and glue. However, Gray-Nicolls is already one step ahead and has developed a bat which replaces the rubber with 10% carbon. The company said it believed the handle for the Fusion II was within the proposed new law.

Read Cricinfo’s story on the changes here.